Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “application programming interface”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

A Review of Lightweight Thread Approaches for High Performance Computing

High-level, directive-based solutions are becoming the programming models (PMs) of the multi/many-core architectures. Several solutions relying on operating system (OS) threads perfectly work with a moderate number of cores. However, exascale systems will spawn hundreds of thousands of threads in order to exploit their massive parallel architectures and thus conventional OS threads are too heavy for that purpose. Several lightweight thread (LWT) libraries have recently appeared offering lighter mechanisms to tackle massive concurrency. In order to examine the suitability of LWTs in high-level runtimes, we develop a set of microbenchmarks consisting of commonlyfound patterns in current parallel codes. Moreover, we study the semantics offered by some LWT libraries in order to expose the similarities between different LWT application programming interfaces. This study reveals that a reduced set of LWT functions can be sufficient to cover the common parallel code patterns and that those LWT libraries perform better than OS threads-based solutions in cases where task and nested parallelism are becoming more popular with new architectures.

Castello, Adrian↗
DOE OSTI2023

Normality of I-V Measurements Using ML

There is an increased interest in instrument-computing ecosystems (ICEs) that support science workflows empowered by AI-automated experiments and computations in diverse areas. In particular, electrochemistry ICEs are promising for accelerating the design and discovery of electrochemical systems for energy storage and conversion, by automating significant parts of workflows that combine synthesis and characterization experiments with computations. They require the integration of flow controllers, solvent containers, pumps, fraction collectors, and potentiostats, all connected to an electrochemical cell, as illustrated in Fig. 1. These are specialized instruments with custom software that is not originally designed for network integration. We developed network and software solutions for electrochemical workflows that adapt system and instrument settings in real-time for multiple rounds of experiments. In particular, we developed Python wrappers for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of instrument commands and Pyro client-server modules that enable them to be executed from remote computers. The entire workflow is orchestrated by a Jupyter notebook running on a remote computer.

Al Najjar, Anees↗
DOE OSTI2018

The Ongoing Evolution of OpenMP

Here, this paper presents an overview of the past, present and future of the OpenMP application programming interface (API). While the API originally specified a small set of directives that guided shared memory fork-join parallelization of loops and program sections, OpenMP now provides a richer set of directives that capture a wide range of parallelization strategies that are not strictly limited to shared memory. As we look toward the future of OpenMP, we immediately see further evolution of the support for that range of parallelization strategies and the addition of direct support for debugging and performance analysis tools. Looking beyond the next major release of the specification of the OpenMP API, we expect the specification eventually to include support for more parallelization strategies and to embrace closer integration into its Fortran, C and, in particular, C++ base languages, which will likely require the API to adopt additional programming abstractions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrated System Planning: Emerging Software Requirements in the Power Industry

Power system planning software remains fragmented across organizational boundaries, with specialized tools for capacity expansion, production cost modeling, power flow, and dynamic analysis operating on incompatible data models and assumptions. This article argues that the fragmentation is not merely a technical problem but a predictable consequence of Conway's law: software architectures mirror the departmental structures within which they are developed. Regulatory milestones like Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 888 formalized these divisions, but the roots trace back to the distinct engineering disciplines-mechanical, chemical, and electrical-that staffed generation and transmission planning departments in vertically integrated utilities. As the industry moves toward integrated system planning (ISP) that coordinates generation, transmission, and distribution investment decisions, the software ecosystem must evolve accordingly. We identify five categories of software requirements to enable this transition: coherent data inputs decoupled from individual applications, unified and extensible data schemas, modular component representations that support multiple abstraction levels, lifecycle management of planning datasets, and well-defined application programming interface (API) contracts that separate data exchange from algorithmic control. We examine how these requirements interact with three common workflow patterns-serial gate clearing, sequential multiapplication, and convergence oriented-and discuss the interface design principles each demands. We then outline a vision for platform-based planning architectures where specialized analytical services compose through standardized interfaces and where artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) tools augment decision support within a disciplined software infrastructure. The practices proposed here offer a path from today's siloed tool collections toward collaborative planning ecosystems capable of handling the complexity of modern power system transformation.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Extending XACC for Quantum Optimal Control

Quantum computing vendors are beginning to open up application programming interfaces for direct pulse-level quantum control. With this, programmers can begin to describe quantum kernels of execution via sequences of arbitrary pulse shapes. This opens new avenues of research and development with regards to smart quantum compilation routines that enable direct translation of higher-level digital assembly representations to these native pulse instructions. In this work, we present an extension to the XACC system-level quantum-classical software framework that directly enables this compilation lowering phase via user-specified quantum optimal control techniques. This extension enables the translation of digital quantum circuit representations to equivalent pulse sequences that are optimal with respect to the backend system dynamics. Our work is modular and extensible, enabling third party optimal control techniques and strategies in both C++ and Python. We demonstrate this extension with familiar gradient-based methods like gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE), gradient optimization of analytic controls (GOAT), and Krotov's method. Our work serves as a foundational component of future quantum-classical compiler designs that lower high-level programmatic representations to low-level machine instructions.

Nguyen, Thien↗
DOE OSTI2020

Analysis of Threading Libraries for High Performance Computing

With the appearance of multi-/many core machines, applications and runtime systems have evolved in order to exploit the new on-node concurrency brought by new software paradigms. POSIX threads (Pthreads) was widely-adopted for that purpose and it remains as the most used threading solution in current hardware. Lightweight thread (LWT) libraries emerged as an alternative offering lighter mechanisms to tackle the massive concurrency of current hardware. In this article, we analyze in detail the most representative threading libraries including Pthread- and LWT-based solutions. In addition, to examine the suitability of LWTs for different use cases, we develop a set of microbenchmarks consisting of OpenMP patterns commonly found in current parallel codes, and we compare the results using threading libraries and OpenMP implementations. Moreover, we study the semantics offered by threading libraries in order to expose the similarities among different LWT application programming interfaces and their advantages over Pthreads. This article exposes that LWT libraries outperform solutions based on operating system threads when tasks and nested parallelism are required.

GLT↗
DOE OSTI2017

On Parallelizing Single Dynamic Simulation Using HPC Techniques and APIs of Commercial Software

Time-domain simulations are heavily used in today’s planning and operation practices to assess power system transient stability and post-transient voltage/frequency profiles following severe contingencies to comply with industry standards. Because of the increased modeling complexity, it is several times slower than real time for state-of-the-art commercial packages to complete a dynamic simulation for a large-scale model. With the growing stochastic behavior introduced by emerging technologies, power industry has seen a growing need for performing security assessment in real time. This paper presents a parallel implementation framework to speed up a single dynamic simulation by leveraging the existing stability model library in commercial tools through their application programming interfaces (APIs). Several high performance computing (HPC) techniques are explored such as parallelizing the calculation of generator current injection, identifying fast linear solvers for network solution, and parallelizing data outputs when interacting with APIs in the commercial package, TSAT. The proposed method has been tested on a WECC planning base case with detailed synchronous generator models and exhibits outstanding scalable performance with sufficient accuracy.

Diao, Ruisheng↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-T-27: A Tool for Routine Quality Assurance of Radiotherapy Dose Calculation Software

Purpose: Dose calculation software is thoroughly evaluated when it is commissioned; however, evaluation of periodic software updates is typically limited in scope due to staffing constraints and the need to quickly return the treatment planning system to clinical service. We developed a tool for quickly and comprehensively testing and documenting dose calculation software against measured data. Methods: A tool was developed using MatLab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA) for evaluation of dose calculation algorithms against measured data. Inputs to the tool are measured data, reference DICOM RT PLAN files describing the measurements, and dose calculations in DICOM format. The tool consists of a collection of extensible modules that can perform analysis of point dose, depth dose curves, and profiles using dose difference, distance-to-agreement, and the gamma-index. Each module generates a report subsection that is incorporated into a master template, which is converted to final form in portable document format (PDF). Results: After each change to the treatment planning system, a report can be generated in approximately 90 minutes. The tool has been in use for more than 5 years, spanning 5 versions of the eMC and 4 versions of the AAA. We have detected changes to the algorithms that affected clinical practice once during this period. Conclusion: Our tool provides an efficient method for quality assurance of dose calculation software, providing a complete set of tests for an update. Future work includes the addition of plan level tests, allowing incorporation of, for example, the TG-119 test suite for IMRT, and integration with the treatment planning system via an application programming interface. Integration with the planning system will permit fully-automated testing and reporting at scheduled intervals.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2014

TU-C-17A-03: An Integrated Contour Evaluation Software Tool Using Supervised Pattern Recognition for Radiotherapy

Purpose: Radiotherapy (RT) contours delineated either manually or semiautomatically require verification before clinical usage. Manual evaluation is very time consuming. A new integrated software tool using supervised pattern contour recognition was thus developed to facilitate this process. Methods: The contouring tool was developed using an object-oriented programming language C# and application programming interfaces, e.g. visualization toolkit (VTK). The C# language served as the tool design basis. The Accord.Net scientific computing libraries were utilized for the required statistical data processing and pattern recognition, while the VTK was used to build and render 3-D mesh models from critical RT structures in real-time and 360° visualization. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used for system self-updating geometry variations of normal structures based on physician-approved RT contours as a training dataset. The inhouse design of supervised PCA-based contour recognition method was used for automatically evaluating contour normality/abnormality. The function for reporting the contour evaluation results was implemented by using C# and Windows Form Designer. Results: The software input was RT simulation images and RT structures from commercial clinical treatment planning systems. Several abilities were demonstrated: automatic assessment of RT contours, file loading/saving of various modality medical images and RT contours, and generation/visualization of 3-D images and anatomical models. Moreover, it supported the 360° rendering of the RT structures in a multi-slice view, which allows physicians to visually check and edit abnormally contoured structures. Conclusion: This new software integrates the supervised learning framework with image processing and graphical visualization modules for RT contour verification. This tool has great potential for facilitating treatment planning with the assistance of an automatic contour evaluation module in avoiding unnecessary manual verification for physicians/dosimetrists. In addition, its nature as a compact and stand-alone tool allows for future extensibility to include additional functions for physicians’ clinical needs.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2016

TH-EF-BRB-02: Feasibility of Optimization for Dynamic Trajectory Radiotherapy

Purpose: Over the last years, volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) has been widely introduced into clinical routine using a coplanar delivery technique. However, VMAT might be improved by including dynamic couch and collimator rotations, leading to dynamic trajectory radiotherapy (DTRT). In this work the feasibility and the potential benefit of DTRT was investigated. Methods: A general framework for the optimization was developed using the Eclipse Scripting Research Application Programming Interface (ESRAPI). Based on contoured target and organs at risk (OARs), the structures are extracted using the ESRAPI. Sampling potential beam directions, regularly distributed on a sphere using a Fibanocci-lattice, the fractional volume-overlap of each OAR and the target is determined and used to establish dynamic gantry-couch movements. Then, for each gantry-couch track the most suitable collimator angle is determined for each control point by optimizing the area between the MLC leaves and the target contour. The resulting dynamic trajectories are used as input to perform the optimization using a research version of the VMAT optimization algorithm and the ESRAPI. The feasibility of this procedure was tested for a clinically motivated head and neck case. Resulting dose distributions for the VMAT plan and for the dynamic trajectory treatment plan were compared based on DVH-parameters. Results: While the DVH for the target is virtually preserved, improvements in maximum dose for the DTRT plan were achieved for all OARs except for the inner-ear, where maximum dose remains the same. The major improvements in maximum dose were 6.5% of the prescribed dose (66 Gy) for the parotid and 5.5% for the myelon and the eye. Conclusion: The result of this work suggests that DTRT has a great potential to reduce dose to OARs with similar target coverage when compared to conventional VMAT treatment plans. This work was supported by Varian Medical Systems. This work was supported by Varian Medical Systems.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

A MultiGPU Performance-Portable Solution for Array Programming Based on Kokkos

Today, multiGPU nodes are widely used in high-performance computing and data centers. However, current programming models do not provide simple, transparent, and portable support for automatically targeting multiple GPUs within a node on application areas of array programming. In this paper, we describe a new application programming interface based on the Kokkos programming model to enable array computation on multiple GPUs in a transparent and portable way across both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. We implement different variations of this technique to accommodate the exchange of stencils (array boundaries) among different GPU memory spaces, and we provide autotuning to select the proper number of GPUs, depending on the computational cost of the operations to be computed on arrays, that is completely transparent to the programmer. We evaluate our multiGPU extension on Summit (#5 TOP500), with six NVIDIA V100 Volta GPUs per node, and Crusher that contains identical hardware/software as Frontier (#1 TOP500), with four AMD MI250X GPUs, each with 2 Graphics Compute Dies (GCDs)for a total of 8 GCDs per node. We also compare the performance of this solution against the use of MPI + Kokkos, which is the cur-rent de facto solution for multiple GPUs in Kokkos. Our evaluation shows that the new Kokkos solution provides good scalability for many GPUs and a faster and simpler solution (from a programming productivity perspective) than MPI + Kokkos.

Valero Lara, Pedro↗
DOE OSTI2016

Portals Reference Implementation v. 1.0

The Portals reference implementation is based on the Portals 4.X API, published by Sandia National Laboratories as a freely available public document. It is designed to be an implementation of the Portals Networking Application Programming Interface and is used by several other upper layer protocols like SHMEM, GASNet and MPI. It is implemented over existing networks, specifically Ethernet and InfiniBand networks. This implementation provides Portals networks functionality and serves as a software emulation of Portals compliant networking hardware. It can be used to develop software using the Portals API prior to the debut of Portals networking hardware, such as Bull’s BXI interconnect, as well as a substitute for portals hardware on development platforms that do not have Portals compliant hardware. The reference implementation provides new capabilities beyond that of a typical network, namely the ability to have messages matched in hardware in a way compatible with upper layer software such as MPI or SHMEM. It also offers methods of offloading network operations via triggered operations, which can be used to create offloaded collective operations. Specific details on the Portals API can be found at http://portals4.org.

Grant, RyanE.↗
DOE OSTI2016

Developer Network

NREL's Developer Network, developer.nrel.gov, provides data that users can access to provide data to their own analyses, mobile and web applications. Developers can retrieve the data through a Web services API (application programming interface). The Developer Network handles overhead of serving up web services such as key management, authentication, analytics, reporting, documentation standards, and throttling in a common architecture, while allowing web services and APIs to be maintained and managed independently.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2017

Home Energy Management System - VOLTTRON Integration

In most Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) available in the market, different devices running different communication protocols cannot interact with each other and exchange information. As a result of this integration, the information about different devices running different communication protocol can be accessible by other agents and devices running on VOLTTRON platform. The integration process can be used by any HEMS available in the market regardless of the programming language they use. If the existing HEMS provides an Application Programming Interface (API) based on the RESTFul architecture, that API can be used for integration. Our candidate HEMS in this project is home-assistant (Hass). An agent is implemented which can communicate with the Hass API and receives information about the devices loaded on the API. The agent publishes the information it receives on the VOLTTRON message bus so other agents can have access to this information. On the other side, for each type of devices, an agent is implemented such as Climate Agent, Lock Agent, Switch Agent, Light Agent, etc. Each of these agents is subscribed to the messages published on the message bus about their associated devices. These agents can also change the status of the devices by sending appropriate service calls to the API. Other agents and services on the platform can also access this information and coordinate their decision-making process based on this information.

Zandi, Helia↗
DOE OSTI2019

Commercial Building Energy Saver, API (CBES API) v2.0

The CBES API provides Application Programming Interface to a suite of functions to improve energy efficiency of buildings, including building energy benchmarking, preliminary retrofit analysis using a pre-simulation database DEEP, and detailed retrofit analysis using energy modeling with the EnergyPlus simulation engine. New capabilities in version 2.0 include renewable technologies (PV, storage), advanced HVAC systems, demand response measures, TDV (Time Dependent Valuation energy) metrics, as well as shading from adjacent buildings, trees or roof obstructions. The CBES API is used to power the LBNL CBES Web App. It can be used by third party developers and vendors.

Hong, Tianzhen↗
DOE OSTI2018

Sandia Cloud Forensics and Incident Response Platform v 1.0

As systems and devices become virtualized and deployed in the cloud, the hypervisor becomes an increasingly appropriate place to collect performance data, system state, system landscape, function calls, transaction traces, and other characteristics. We developed a method by which an introspection application may be coupled with a hypervisor to “reach into” the VM with minimal intrusiveness to collect data critical to the reconstruction of events, files, and operations. Such a capability is required to take advantage of the hypervisor as an instrumentation platform and to integrate that data with more traditional collection mechanisms. The concept of a VM serviced by a lightweight hypervisor is a relatively new paradigm for forensic practitioners. Traditional forensic techniques, based on assumptions that the filesystem was directly interacting with the hardware through an abstraction, afforded the forensic practitioner the assumption that there was nothing controlling the application below the filesystem. This is not the case when using virtualized technologies. Hypervisors can covertly monitor, introspect and interact with the guest in a transparent fashion. The problems of storage and collection of actionable data are exhausting. The current challenge is most hypervisors do not expose a useful application programming interface (API) at a sufficient level to do transparent, fine-grained and customizable introspection. Scalable VM instrumentation and introspection at an in-depth level requires fast handling of events, as well as direct access to VM state. Furthermore, deep introspection benefits greatly from the ability to gather data from the hardware during the VM’s exit to the hypervisor. All of this requires identical access to the system as the hypervisor itself; improper use of this ability could easily cause system instability. It is for this reason we believe that the hypervisor developers have been hesitant to grant this much control through their APIs. However, our approach leverages other means to collect and monitor the guests in a targeted fashion. Virtual machine introspection (VMI) is a technique used to monitor the runtime state of a system-level virtual machine. The runtime state can be may include processor registers, memory, disk, network, and any other hardware-level events A review of research literature and current VMI technologies exposed several limitations and tradeoffs in VMI approaches, including: the use of in-guest agents; kernel to user space transitions (dramatically slowing down processing); VMI tool pre-configuration requirements; hypervisor version lock-in or source code patching; reliance on operating system symbols; limited processor features due to hypervisor (even if the hardware could do more). To address these constraints, a VMI tool was envisioned to provide the cloud forensic capabilities while having as few of these limitations as possible. The Kernel-based Virtual Machine Introspection (KVMi) tool was developed for hypervisors on Intel’s x86-64 architecture. To meet performance, scoping and use-case demands, the follow criteria were applied to KVMi to support live, forensic data collection: • Shall not require in-guest agents. • Shall work with any recent version of modern hypervisors. • Shall introspect upon any guest (VM) running modern versions of Windows, Linux and OS X. • Shall have the ability to find and track operating system artifacts • Shall not require operating system symbol files. • Shall be able to fully handle VM-exits, bypassing execution of the hypervisor if necessary, to facilitate new features the hypervisor may not support. • Shall be compilable/loadable on a running system with standard build tools.

Stout, WilliamM.S.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Broker for Assimilation, Synthesis and Integration of eNvironmental Diverse, Distributed Datasets v1.1.0

BASIN-3D (Broker for Assimilation, Synthesis and Integration of eNvironmental Diverse, Distributed Datasets) uses a data brokering approach to synthesize diverse earth science data from a variety of remote sources in real-time without the need for additional storage. BASIN-3D is an extendable Django web framework application using a generalized data synthesis model that makes the synthesized data available via REpresentational State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interface (API). We have currently implemented our data synthesis model to represent sensor-based time series earth science observations across a hierarchy of spatial locations. Supporting our data synthesis model is a plugin framework that allows developers to map data sources of interest to the BASIN-3D synthesis model

Varadharajan, Charuleka↗
DOE OSTI2017

LinkShop v.1.0.0

LinkShop is a software tool for applying the method of Linkography to the analysis time-sequence data. LinkShop provides command line, web, and application programming interfaces (API) for input and processing of time-sequence data, abstraction models, and ontologies. The software creates graph representations of the abstraction model, ontology, and derived linkograph. Finally, the tool allows the user to perform statistical measurements of the linkograph and refine the ontology through direct manipulation of the linkograph.

Jarocki, JohnCharles↗